OK: the big labels are trying to foist this tax on everyone and hope to profit hansomly from it. They have forgotten, however, that computers can ensure that everyone is paid their rightful dues. It should not be too hard to log downloads of which songs and apportion the right percentage of this month's collected $5 pot in the ratio of who's songs were downloaded.
This would mean that the small guy would get paid just like someone with a big label... but, oh, if the small guy goes with an indy label realising that the indy labels generally take a smaller %age cut than the big labels, hmmm, that looks like a sensible move... hmmm, won't some of the better known artistes do the same, hmmm, how many artistes will the big labels have after a while ?
How soon before the big labels are complaining about this ?
The real purpose is to make more money for those social vampires that we call lawyers. Many small businesses and individuals will publish a cease & desist letter as a way of getting help and also shaming the company suing them into backing off -- all at little cost to them.
What this does is to mean that the guy being sued has either to give in or employ a lawyer at their usual rip off rates.
I have (unfortunately) had enough experience with these parasites, in my own case and helping other dads try to see their kids after divorce, and seen enough lawyers deliberately make things worse to prolong the case and so earn them more money. I sometimes regret not being religious because I would then be happy to know that lawyers would burn in hell.
or should I say the scam-security industry that is feeding off the phony terrorism scare. 9/11 was the best thing that happened for them, they know that no politician will say no to "If we do this we can make the country safer".
We are doing the terrorists' work for them, they just need to chuck an occasional stone at the security hornets nest and a whole new buzzing starts.
This is complete over reaction - look at how much money is being spent; look at how many people have died. Pound for pound better to put money into a new hospital or cancer research.
Yes we will act to preserve a trademark iff someone tries to pass something off as if it were Firefox/... If they want to write a book about it, complete with screen shots, no one will complain.
There has been a lot of comment about the effect on the student, what the university should have done,.... but just think what effect this will have on the other students who are looking at this fiasco. They will say to themselves: "Oh, shit - I had better not say anything that might not be liked by those who have power over me because I might be penalised!". This mindset is likely to last the rest of their lives.
What this sort of thing does is to generate adults who keep their heads down and won't make negative comments no matter what the government, their employer,... does. This means that the few who run the country/company/... can commit outrageous acts and get away with it because the population is too scared to complain.
It is just this sort of mentality that lets the government get away with some of the huge restrictions of freedom that it is imposing.
This sort of thinking is what kills democracy.
I am talking about the USA here, but I am a Brit and can see this sort of thing will also happen here... where our government ignores us and the law anyway.
You are missing a key concept here. Scientific theories are more than descriptions, they collectively form a 'model' of the observable world. As such, they may be used as predictive tools, which is not true of religious dogma.
Religions do predict: "If you don't believe what we tell you to believe we will send the boys round to bash your head in".
OK: the language used by the inquisition and all sorts of fundementalists of many different flavours might not have been quite my words above, but the meaning was clearly the same. This is one of the ways that religions deal with dissent.
Why the F should the data protection act stop the bank investigating fraud ? What questions are the bank prohibited from asking ?
In the UK the data protection act is often used by organisations as an excuse to not do something - quite often because the are too lazy to do a proper job.
If a crime bas been committed the police have good reason to seek to have privacy doors opened - perhaps with the oversight/approval of a judge.
Recent UK legislation is giving civil servants wide investigation powers - without judicial oversight.
Every question asking for meanings ("why") rather than mechanisms ("how"). But why does there need to be a reason? Can things simply not be ?
I find it curious that we believe that there has to be an answer to 'why' questions.
Why do I exist ? Is that really a meaninful question ? It implies that I must be here for some purpose. One of the interesting things about language is that it is easy to ask questions without real meaning.
Assuming that the RIAA wins its case, the damages awarded will be commensurate to the loss. Since the guy was just ripping for his own use (to an easier to use format) I assume that the loss will be zero. Would he have paid again for the songs in MP3 format? Probably not, he would just have had to shuffle physical CDs.
If the last: then if they find the most expensive copyrighted items and sell copies at 1 penny each, it could cause a lot of damage.
It will cause even more damage if all the sales are products of one company - could make it go bust.
I think that they are taking the international legitimacy for this from the Berne convention in partcular article 7 which states:
the term shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed Thus their (Egyptian) legislation on the term is automatically accepted and enforced in all signatories to the Berne convention.
Either:
Other countries will ignore it, or
Other countries will enforce it -- which I doubt, or
It will force a re-evaluation of the Berne convention.
I hope that it is the last option, the Berne convention has been abused by the likes of Disney which has bought votes in the USA senate/... to extend copyright in the USA and thus giving it the ability to milk the rest of the world for things that should have fallen out of copyright, like Steamboat Willie
When previous government edicts on software came out M$ complied without complaint, eg: accessability.
Now it is saying that it is impossible.
This only shows the lie that what M$ is trying to do is to prevent the competition from competeing on a level playing field on what M$ considers to be territory that it owns.
That is the whole point: Walmart makes more profit on chairs than it does on these PCs. They are relying on the Steve inspired fan boys needing to re-furniture their houses after seeing the reviews on their Linux PCs.
I assume that your work mates are receiving the updating contracts. Talk to your work mates: don't sign it and have them not sign it either - they can't sack you all.
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This would mean that the small guy would get paid just like someone with a big label ... but, oh, if the small guy goes with an indy label realising that the indy labels generally take a smaller %age cut than the big labels, hmmm, that looks like a sensible move ... hmmm, won't some of the better known artistes do the same, hmmm, how many artistes will the big labels have after a while ?
How soon before the big labels are complaining about this ?
I thought that all mobile phones were supposed to have radiation counters. Make your mind up fellas!
What this does is to mean that the guy being sued has either to give in or employ a lawyer at their usual rip off rates.
I have (unfortunately) had enough experience with these parasites, in my own case and helping other dads try to see their kids after divorce, and seen enough lawyers deliberately make things worse to prolong the case and so earn them more money. I sometimes regret not being religious because I would then be happy to know that lawyers would burn in hell.
We are doing the terrorists' work for them, they just need to chuck an occasional stone at the security hornets nest and a whole new buzzing starts.
This is complete over reaction - look at how much money is being spent; look at how many people have died. Pound for pound better to put money into a new hospital or cancer research.
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That is an indication that the USA leads the world in the number of lawyers in employment, doesn't say much about the number of scientists.
In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority governs advertising and, amongst other things, insists that it not be misleading.
If we can firm up the paid-for-by-M$ link that we can take M$ to task for breaking the rules. Can anyone prove the link ?
Yes we will act to preserve a trademark iff someone tries to pass something off as if it were Firefox/... If they want to write a book about it, complete with screen shots, no one will complain.
What this sort of thing does is to generate adults who keep their heads down and won't make negative comments no matter what the government, their employer, ... does. This means that the few who run the country/company/... can commit outrageous acts and get away with it because the population is too scared to complain.
It is just this sort of mentality that lets the government get away with some of the huge restrictions of freedom that it is imposing.
This sort of thinking is what kills democracy.
I am talking about the USA here, but I am a Brit and can see this sort of thing will also happen here... where our government ignores us and the law anyway.
Religions do predict: "If you don't believe what we tell you to believe we will send the boys round to bash your head in".
OK: the language used by the inquisition and all sorts of fundementalists of many different flavours might not have been quite my words above, but the meaning was clearly the same. This is one of the ways that religions deal with dissent.
If a crime bas been committed the police have good reason to seek to have privacy doors opened - perhaps with the oversight/approval of a judge. Recent UK legislation is giving civil servants wide investigation powers - without judicial oversight.
This smacks of an excuse.
Why do I exist ? Is that really a meaninful question ? It implies that I must be here for some purpose. One of the interesting things about language is that it is easy to ask questions without real meaning.
So: zero loss means damages of what ?
but it's owner could do.
- The retail cost; top dollar or discount store
- Wholesale (bulk)
- Cost to manufacture
- Price that Antigua chooses to sell it at
If the last: then if they find the most expensive copyrighted items and sell copies at 1 penny each, it could cause a lot of damage. It will cause even more damage if all the sales are products of one company - could make it go bust.I remember byte magasine discussing this 15 years ago ... this is the reference that I can find quickly .
Either:
- Other countries will ignore it, or
- Other countries will enforce it -- which I doubt, or
- It will force a re-evaluation of the Berne convention.
I hope that it is the last option, the Berne convention has been abused by the likes of Disney which has bought votes in the USA senate/... to extend copyright in the USA and thus giving it the ability to milk the rest of the world for things that should have fallen out of copyright, like Steamboat WillieBetter stop there before I start talking about paper bags in the middle of the street - you youngsters don't know what life is!
They are an ISP, if they blocked their customers from reaching http://www.openoffice.org/ that would be news.
This only shows the lie that what M$ is trying to do is to prevent the competition from competeing on a level playing field on what M$ considers to be territory that it owns.
NASA will try to get as much positive spin out of Hubble as it can :-)
We had names the other way round in those days, most significant bit first: uk.co.phcomp
Is in Green in the same way that a 500GB disk holds 5,000,000,000 bytes (== 465 GBytes) rather than 536,870,912,000 bytes ?
That is the whole point: Walmart makes more profit on chairs than it does on these PCs. They are relying on the Steve inspired fan boys needing to re-furniture their houses after seeing the reviews on their Linux PCs.
I assume that your work mates are receiving the updating contracts. Talk to your work mates: don't sign it and have them not sign it either - they can't sack you all.